CompuServe Messages

Sorry Steve, I have absolutely no sympathy for any of the "little guys" that have been driven out, as you put it, by freeware and/or PD software. There is a big market out there, and it includes people willing to pay a lot of money for software, as well as people who will use only PD programs or their own efforts. This market is what will determine the fate of any given item, and if a vendor's program is not suficiently better and/or less costly than one from another source, then the program will fail to sell. The solution for the vendor is to cut prices or improve their product, not to whine about the "unfair" competition. (I'm not accusing you of whining, but you are showing an attitude that is very close to being "the world owes me a living") If you want to get an idea of what constitutes value in the software area, it pays to watch the PD stuff. (Freeware is just another way of marketing) PD programs, no matter how good, were obviously considered by their authors to be short of those qualities that would allow them to be sold in good conscience. I have put many programs into the public domain for PETs and 64s, and a few of them have drawn comments to the effect that I should have marketed them. Frankly, they didn't meet my own criteria of what constitutes good value. If more people and vendors thought this way, we would never have seen the likes of Maxicomm. I wish you good fortune with your company's offering, and when I see it, I will make my decision to buy or not based upon whether it offers good value. And that's what it's all about.